Miles and Kiera, Parts 1 & 2

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, we were visited by the Smithseses (Steve, Nettie, and Keira)...Keira and Miles posed (as much posing as 1-year-olds can do) for another portrait:



For comparison, here they are about a year prior:

Our Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgivings tend to be haphazard, thrown-together affairs...but if you're curious what we (and Rotorglow) had...

• Lazy sage turkey, from Whole Foods
• Cinnamon sweet potato slices
• Glazed autumn vegetables (turnips, carrots, Brussel sprouts, onions)...surprisingly, this was really tasty, despite the bland-seeming glaze of a pinch of sugar, butter, and water. And "Brussel" is a really weird word.
• Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic and sauteed mushrooms.
• Cranberry sauce...I throw diced apples in for awesomeness.

And I think i've learned to really like this Simply Recipes blog...

Sacrifice At The Temple Of The Thumb

Not 24 hours after listening to Prof. Graeme Clark discussing human senses...specifically mentioning the importance of the human thumb:

"The thumb is an outstanding example of the integration of the senses. Because of its great importance, it takes up a large area of the body map in the cortex of the brain. Its skin is so sensitive that it is possible to distinguish two points separated by only two millimetres. To give it such fine control, the muscles that bend the thumb have more receptors than any other muscles in the body. So unique is the thumb, it was reported that during the communist and atheistic era in Russia, two sculptors were in such awe, that they set up an altar and worshipped the god of the thumb."

...what do I do?  I send shock waves through my somatotopic body map by slicing the tip and underside of my right-hand thumb open on an apple slicer.  One of those awesome, yawning gashes (I exaggerate) that make you consider heading to the ER for stitches.  But boy, did that hurt (and boy, did that confirm my low threshold for pain).

Making it through a day with only bandaged-and-painful use of your dominant thumb is interestingly difficult (for instance:  starting your car up and/or getting a squirmy toddler into a car seat is now...tough).

The 2007 Boyer Lectures

I've begun listening to the 2007 Boyer Lectures on ABC Radio National...this year, Prof. Graeme Clark presents "Restoring The Senses." 

"This year marks the 48th anniversary of the Boyer Lectures. Professor Graeme Clark, creator of the bionic ear, is ABC Radio National's Boyer lecturer for 2007. In this series of six lectures beginning Sunday 11 November at 5pm, Professor Clark draws on decades of experience as a clinician, surgeon and researcher to celebrate our senses. He also tells the compelling story of how the bionic ear was created, and provides an insight into the extraordinary future of bionics."

So far (through the first of the six presentations), the discussion is enlightening and insightful (if leading a bit towards "the complexity of our brains and consciousness means there is a god"), and worth a listen.

If interested, ABC Radio National has archived previous Boyer Lecture series transcripts back to 1997 (it looks like audio archives are available starting in 2004).

2007 MITX Award

Well hey, turns out that at last Thursday's MITX Awards Ceremony, Six Red Marbles (I couldn't attend the ceremony) took home the "Education and Learning" award for our work on Merriam-Webster Inc.'s Word Central web site...a site featuring a Tim Lynch original design.  Sweet!

It's a proud day...

To quote Matt:  "It's a proud day when my hometown [and middle school] does something to make it worthy of a FARK entry."

Future of Web Design 2007 - a review

On Wednesday, I attended the Future of Web Design conference in NYC.

I was happy to have won a ticket, and was generally excited to go...however, I think I was left unimpressed, which was too bad. Overall, I was left thinking that I was glad I didn't pay to go...which kind of made me feel bad because it was clear a lot of effort went into planning the event.

The most glaring (har) complaint I had was the venue. This was my first time attending something at the Javits Center, and I really disliked the hulking, monstrous, ugly building. The conference was in an upstairs glassed-in cavernous area with attendees facing the stage and the river as a backdrop. A glaring (har) problem was that until about noon (after starting around 9), the large projection screen used by all the presenters was bathed in sunlight...meaning, no one could see anything. An LCD screen was brought in and placed at the head of the crowd...but still. This seemed like it should have been...expected? Thought about?

The acoustics of the 10-story room we were in were...bad. I'm not sure if it was just me, but depending on the speaker, I could barely make out what was being said (coupled with not being able to see presenters' slides...I missed a lot). At times, talks sounded like echo-y, muffled, bass-y mumbling...like a subway announcement.

And not only was there no free coffee...there was Javits Center no-other-option $3.50/per cup brew ($4 for a bottle of water). Lame thing to mention, but it just added to the experience.

The talks themselves were ok. Some were really great (Josh Davis' introductory talk about design inspiration was fantastic...a shame we couldn't really see it), while others just seemed really basic, overly simple, and kind of rushed. I'm not sure what could have been done better, but it didn't really feel like "the future" of anything (and I guess i'm not alone in feeling this way).

It was too bad, overall. I was excited to take things away that I could further investigate or bring into my project work...but I really couldn't get past the production values (I think I was also comparing it, sort of, to the An Event Apart I attended earlier this year...which had lengthier, focused talks, and a polished, well-oiled feel to the whole day).

Plaxo Pulse: No Thanks

So, i've been getting a bunch of "invites" to Plaxo Pulse today (for whatever reason).  Basically, they are short descriptionless emails that say:  "I'd like to connect to you on Pulse...Pulse is the easiest way to stay up-to-date and share photos, contact info, recommendations, or just about anything from the sites you already use (YouTube, Flickr, Digg, etc.) with the people you know."

Signed with a first name, which I assume is the name of the person who wants me to use this service.

Thing is:

 - I have no idea what "Plaxo Pulse" is (yes, I can google it to find out)
 - The only clue I might have about who might be using this is a first name...which isn't very clear (I know a lot of Matts, for instance)
 - when I click to "accept this request and see what i'm sharing," I have to sign up...sign up for a service that I don't know what it is exactly, nor from whom it is coming.

So, no thanks.  At least I can (allegedly) permanently opt-out of Plaxo emails.

Update:  hey look, what gravitonic said...

The Feynman-Tufte-Vantastic Principle

Thanks to an email from Chris and David...I was drawn to Richard Feynman's Van:






Finally! A link between three of my passions: information design, quantum physics I don't pretend understand in the least, and vans.

"Richard Feynman, the late Caltech physicist, is famous for working on the atomic bomb, winning a Nobel Prize in Physics, cracking safes, playing drums and driving a 1975 Dodge Maxivan adorned with squiggly lines on the side panels. Most people who saw it gazed in puzzlement, but once in a while someone would ask the driver why he had Feynman diagrams all over his van, only to be told, "Because I'm Richard Feynman!"

...which leads to:

[Edward Tufte] meets the master of clear and precise seeing in what I call the Feynman-Tufte Principle: a visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van."

From Scientific American

Attack of the Halloween!